The death penalty debate has reached this blog’s comment box and I wanted to give a few of my thoughts on the issue, particularly why I, as an orthodox Catholic and political and social conservative, am against the death penalty. Before I wade into this topic I want to give this caveat: I’m writing as an individual Catholic and am not the Magisterium. The Church has given a lot of guidance on this topic and yet there is a wide rang of latitude about what one may believe, unlike with the topics of say abortion or euthanasia. From what I can see, only promoting systems that are inherently unjust or refusing to allow for any defensive use of the death penalty would be outside the bounds of Catholic teaching. Thus, a host of positions are possible, including mine. Here’s why I reject capital punishment.
First, as a Catholic who desires to be obedient to the Church, I’ve noticed the Magisterium has definitely moved towards a more limited or even anti-death penalty direction. While always recognizing the right of the state to defend its citizens from the threat of criminals, recent Popes have also taught that the death penalty isn’t always the best way to do this. Here is the argument as the Catechism (borrowing heavily from John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae) presents it:
-in cases where no imminent danger exists, we should err on the side of human dignity and not employ the death penalty.
-given the existence of modern prisons, abolition of the death penalty in most cases is not a threat to public safety
-allowing the criminal to live allows for repentance and conversion
I also think, as Catholics, rejecting the death penalty in most cases serves as a witness to the Church’s teaching on the sacredness of all life, especially the unborn. I heard Richard John Neuhaus make this argument when he spoke to my school.
All throughout this entry, however, I’ve been using the phrase “in most cases” since clearly Catholic teaching allows the death penalty for defense while admitting the circumstances where it should be applied are becoming rarer. Such a situation where the Church would allow it would probably be where there is no practical way to incarcerate an offender who is very likely to kill again. Perhaps this situation could occur in developing countries or in military situations, but is unlikely in the West if we truly keep violent offenders in prison.
Second, I oppose the death penalty as a conservative. I am essentially an old line conservative who doesn’t really trust the government to act competently or justly. I don’t trust the government to raise children, provide health care, rebuild after a natural disaster, keep the price of gasoline down, or use the knowledge of gun ownership wisely. Why would I trust the government, which is often inept at best and hopelessly partial and corrupt at worst, to decide who lives and dies? Ronald Reagan once said the most terrifying words you can hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” I think the words “I’m from the government and I’m here to execute you” are far more terrifying. The death penalty elevates the state to the level of the divine. The ability to raise taxes and write laws is one thing; the ability to take a life is another. Even if capital punishment is allowed by God, there is far too much sin in the world for it to ever be applied fairly and justly; and even one innocent life taken is a terrible crime. Once again, I recognize, as all conservatives do, the right to legitimate defense in certain situations for the state and private individuals alike. I just don’t believe this applies, in most cases, to capital punishment.
These are just my thoughts. And, since the Catholic Church allows a range of opinion on this matter, feel free to state your own position and/or tell me why you reject mine.
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December 11, 2007 at 2:22 am
Why is being locked away in a small room till you die more dignified than than death?
That’s why we say one can “die like a man”.
Death seems a fitting punishment for certain crimes. God established it (See Gen 1:1 - Malachi 3:24) and the Church has taught it until when, the 1950’s?
December 11, 2007 at 2:42 am
Excellent post. The commenter here misses the basic point here: the Church still teaches that the death penalty is allowed. However, the Church has always taught that it should be used as a last resort to protect society, and never as a first action. The difference today from the past is that we now have the capabilities to protect society from these heinous criminals, thus largely eliminating any use it had as a protection of society, which eliminates any justification of its use for which the Church had ever advocated.
The other important aspect of letting someone survive is that if you find out you made a mistake and convicted the wrong person (for argument’s sake, I’ll just point out that Jesus was rather wrongly executed), you have the ability to at least attempt to correct a great wrong. If the man is dead, all hope is lost.
Finally, the Church calls us to forgiveness and repentance. By allowing the criminal to live, you give him or her an opportunity to repent and convert, while at the same time giving the grieving family the chance to experience the greatest gift of all — true love through forgiveness, given freely and unwarranted, without expectation or repayment.
P.s. As a fellow conservative, I don’t trust the government either.
December 11, 2007 at 3:53 am
I have strange way of looking at this. (Usually do.)
When a very fuzzy liberal (probably a member of my immediate family) begins to elaborate on the “cruelty” of biblical laws, I try to make them imagine life in a small primitive village.
This village - whether it was Jewish, Christian, animist, what have you - has many ancient customs and rules that have aided the people in maintaining the integrity of their way of life and has kept them safe for many lifetimes.
Then, some idiot decides to do things his way, wrecks someone’s home, kills somebody, etc. I ask the fuzzy-thinker-to-whom-I-am-probably-related, “Should the village now construct a prsion and incarcerate this man for his entire life, support him free of charge and devote precious resources to his existence, when he so little valued the existence of everyone else? Of course they should kill him! Not out of retribution, but because it is the only way to survive! It would have been self-destructive for an ancient people to try and implement any laws less severe than that promulgated by Hammurabi, or by Moses.
Well, if my relative ate his or her Wheaties that morning, they might point out that we live in the modern world and not in a primitive village and “times have changed” (there’s a phrase that makes me tense).
I counter that the same idea still holds. How fair is it for the rest of us to feed, clothe and shelter some creep that doesn’t obey the law, while I break my back trying to raise my own children and teach them to obey the law?
Again, I am not advocating killing prisoners in retribution, but rather because it is truly disrespectful, even harmful, to coddle people who trample on civilization while most of us are trying to hold it together.
In a sense, a no-death-penalty policy divides us, or allows for more public division, because it keeps those of us on the outside from identifying, one with the other, as civilized people who are trying to make society function.
All that said, I am also afraid of cases of mistaken identity, miscarriages of justice, etc. The idea that an innocent man might be killed is awful. But that only means that we should ensure proper functioning of the justice system, not refrain from dealing out justice.
-By allowing the criminal to live, you give him or her an opportunity to repent and convert-
This may sound awful, but there is plenty of time to save your soul on the way to the gallows. That is why we have priests in prison. You confess, make an act of contrition, and the hangman sends you to heaven. They are actually privileged compared to the rest of us, who might die unexpectedly in our sins.
December 11, 2007 at 4:03 am
It wasn’t until the last 50-odd years that societies have had the ability to incarcerate for life?
What resources or technology were they lacking in say the 11 c. to do this? They didn’t have secure rooms, guards, cooks, and laundry back then? What else does it take to “protect society”?
December 11, 2007 at 4:15 am
OK…wow, what a topic! Someone opened a can o’ worms, didn’t he? (said smiling slyly)
One argument against the death penalty I often hear is that since we are Christians we have a command to forgive. True enough…we are to forgive offenses AGAINST OUR OWN PERSONS. But we cannot forgive someone offenses he has committed against someone else. Only the injured party can forgive in that case…and if the injured party is a murdered one, well… See my point?
St. Paul tells us that God established government for the purpose of keeping public order AND for punishing wrongdoers (and remember, he was speaking of the hated Roman government!). One of government’s duties is to balance justice. If someone has committed murder, society (through its government) has the duty to 1) remove the wrongdoer from society 2) punish the wrongdoer with execution if his crime was capital. So Holy Mother Church has taught…and I assume that one hasn’t changed.
Of course, we as a society must do everything humanly possible to make sure that only the guilty are punished. And there’s the rub because, Holy Church also teaches that societies ARE accountable when they unjustly, even ignorantly, punish the innocent.
I’m not going to try to weave all this together into a coherent whole at the moment. My point is, sometimes capital punishment is necessary but we must never take delight in it and we must be sure, before God, that we are inflicting it on the right parties.
December 11, 2007 at 5:17 am
Ok, I’ll weigh in since I kinda sorta started it.
Firstly, one measure of Christian morality is the example of Christ. The imitation of Christ, most recently expressed as WWJD, is an ancient approach to moral problems, though it is not the only one. So, what did Jesus do or say? He did spare at least one woman from the death penalty to the sound of stones dropped by fellow sinners. He himself was unjustly condemned to death, a death amounting to the greatest crime in the history of man: deicide.
With regularity Christ referred to condemnation to hell. He even suggested that in some instances it would be better if one had not been born or other such things. But I do not recall Christ suggesting that someone be executed for a crime. Indeed, it is hard for me to imagine Christ either executing a person or ordering him executed.
As for the date the Church’s approach to the death penalty changed, it was actually quite recent. John Paul the Great made a prudential judgment in the 1990’s that, while state execution remained permissible in cases where the state may not be able to protect the general public from the condemned (such as times of war, social chaos, or lack of sufficient resources), these conditions are no longer common in the modern world and that in the great majority of cases the death penalty was unwarranted.
This seems reasonable to me. It also seems Christ like to me.
Of course it isn’t fair. Neither is turning the other cheek, being generous to the poor, forgiving, being forgiven, the mercy of God. Clearly society pays enormous costs for the condemned either way (Capital punishment can actually be more expensive considering the legal appeals process). And many other costs are not fair either such as the care of the infirm, the disabled, children, etc.
But the question to me is not fairness but Christian morality. And, I believe that Christ would not choose state execution.
December 11, 2007 at 6:03 am
“Here’s why I reject Catholic punishment.” shouldn’t it read: capital punishment. Just a typo I presume. :)
December 11, 2007 at 3:05 pm
-since we are Christians we have a command to forgive.-
But this has nothing to do with punishment. When my son breaks something, hits his sister, lies, etc, I always forgive him. But he still gets punished. It would be silly to go around “forgiving” everything in the sense that you speak about. Forgiveness is “in the heart” (a vile term, but , there, I used it). Society still has to function, and it can’t go around forgiving murderers.
If we are going to forgive them, why not let them out of jail? Why do some draw the line at withholding only one kind of punishment?
Father,
With much respect.
-I believe that Christ would not choose state execution-
Wouldn’t this mean that Christ rejected the Law, which he says that he would not change?
December 11, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Rob,
Christ’s relationship to the law is not so simple as that. Even in Matthew, the most Jewish and law centered gospel you have in Chapter 5 the famous series of “You have heard it said…but I tell you” passages. In that series which follows the Beatitudes which themselves subvert the law, Jesus condemns divorce, taking oaths, eye for an eye retribution, and hatred of enemies. While none of these pertains directly to capital punishment, they all point to a reordering of the law. So, to say that Jesus simply does not change the law is inadequate. Rather, Christ fulfills the law and the prophets regarding the messiah and salvation, but his teachings repeatedly transcend the law with regard to ethics, calling for a higher standard.
December 11, 2007 at 4:24 pm
father j.
I’m sure you mean well and that you believe what you’re saying but frankly, it sounds like more mushy, liberal, sentimentalized Christianity to me.
We live in a society that is, if we are honest, coming apart at the seams because of such thinking. Crime is, virtually, rampant in our streets, gangs practically run many cities, and violence against the innocent is a daily report in the news. Seems to me that the TRULY Christian thing to do, to protect the innocent, is to be HARDER on violent crime, not softer.
If this offends, so be it, but if someone were (God forbid!) to murder someone I loved, then I would PRAY for the bastard to swing or fry or whatever. And do so with a clear conscience.
December 11, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Wow, hobbit, it’s been at least a decade since I was last accused of being a liberal, much less a mushy, sentimentalized one. Funny.
But that’s what happens when you identify with the Catholic Church, JPII and Jesus Christ. Sometimes you are called a reactionary ultra-arch-conservative and sometimes you are called a mushy, liberal, sentimentalized Christian.
From the point of view of JPII, it is called the consistent life ethic or the Gospel of Life.
In the end the Gospel is neither conservative nor liberal. It is holy.
December 11, 2007 at 7:23 pm
fr j,
So anyone who disagrees with you does NOT identify with the Catholic Church, JPII, and Jesus Christ?
Sorry, bud…I’m as Catholic as you are and follow my Lord Jesus as well as I can. But, of course, that’s the way with liberals…they’re open to everyone’s opionion…as long as it agrees with them.
December 11, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Wait a second, who started the name calling? I am not a liberal, and I did not say you weren’t Catholic. What I am saying is that calling someone a mushy liberal is irrelevant to Catholic discourse. The Catholic Church is neither exclusively liberal nor exclusively conservative. And yes, the Catholic Church and John Paul II do come down on the side of life imprisonment instead of capital punishment. My position is identical to the Church’s. So, if I am a mushy liberal, so is Pope John Paul the Great and so is the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
If you favor capital punishment, that is fine. It is your prerogative as an American and as a Catholic. No problem. But we don’t have to resort to name calling, do we?
December 11, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Capital Punishment is one of those issues where you can find support from the Bible and Tradition for both positions in the debate. Also, the Church recognizes that capital punishment is an entirely different issue than abortion, in which there is no debate as to its use.
Please let’s keep the conversation on an academic level, and not get personal, since everyone here is committed to following Catholic Teaching.
December 11, 2007 at 8:10 pm
fr,
That’s how I read it and your tone was pompous sounding. I don’t tolerate that from anyone. Sorry, I’m hot-tempered…just the way it is.
OK. We’ll just agree to disagree. But…infallibility does not mean that whatever a Pope says is right at all times (and catechisms certainly reflect the times in which they are written). I quite simply think, in this case, the Pope was wrong.
December 11, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Everyone,
I wrote this post because I thought it would be interesting food for thought and challenge us all (and in addition your comments would challenge me). It’s getting a little beyond that.
Please, let us remember that both sides in this debate can argue from Scripture and Tradition and both sides are able to make convincing arguments. So, let’s please keep it civil and remember that we’re all faithful Catholics loyal to the Church, trying to make sense of an issue of prudential judgment (in other words, no heretics or dissenters here).
December 11, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Just because soemthing is premissible doesn’t make it correct.
I liken the Death penalty to playing God. Do we have a right to play God? Do we have the right to take someone’s life?
I’m of the opinion that we don’t have the right to play God in any situation.
The only difference between the death penalty and abortion, is that in one situation, a person has a right to defend themselves, and the other doesn’t.
If the death penalty can be avoided, it should be avoided.
I just think that in the modern world that the faculties to have the death penalty do not exist.
December 11, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Fr. J,
Correction taken. Thank you.
But I stil do not see how taking a man’s life in an execution is not Christian, but taking the last fifty years of his life and freedom and is a perfectly Christ-like response. Again, if we are to forgive, why not free them?
When a priest absolves someone of sin, he also gives them penance. Isn’t this unChristian? Shouldn’t he just forgive them outright? Or do we need to attempt atonement, even if we can never adequately atone for our sins?
I put forward the same position for the death penalty debate. We have to attempt justice. It is not society’s job to forgive sins, it’s mine.
December 11, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I believe that a life sentence is more just than the death penalty. Being locked away for the rest of your life, would mean that you are a danger to society. While forgiveness is for all, the punishment would need to be served until natural death, for those who have committed acts that have landed them in a life sentence position
I believe that God gave everyone on this earth their life, and allowed them to live, and that it would be up to God himself to take the man away. There is no hope for the criminal who is sentenced to death, but there is hope of salvation and remorse with a life sentence.
December 11, 2007 at 11:45 pm
-There is no hope for the criminal who is sentenced to death,-
I used to agree, until I learned how many criminal acts on the “outside” are orchestrated from the “inside”. Many gang-leaders wield a great deal of power from prison and threaten judges, corrupt police, etc.
December 12, 2007 at 6:43 am
But I stil do not see how taking a man’s life in an execution is not Christian, but taking the last fifty years of his life and freedom and is a perfectly Christ-like response. Again, if we are to forgive, why not free them?
When a priest absolves someone of sin, he also gives them penance. Isn’t this unChristian? Shouldn’t he just forgive them outright? Or do we need to attempt atonement, even if we can never adequately atone for our sins?
I put forward the same position for the death penalty debate. We have to attempt justice. It is not society’s job to forgive sins, it’s mine.
Excellent points, Rob.
I would suggest, though, that imprisonment is precisely like a penance. And historically this is so, giving us the word “penitentiary.” According to JPII’s reasoning, the death penalty deprives the convict of his due and just penance. The sentence in Christian thought is actually a remedy for the soul. So, by this line of reasoning, the death penalty deprives the individual of a spiritual good.